Pivotal Housing Partners and St. Mary Development Co. plan a pair of five-story apartment buildings near West 25th Street in Cleveland’s Clark-Fulton neighborhood. This five-story building concept is from one of Pivotal’s other planned locations, this one in Buffalo, NY, and is similar to a sketch included in its application for Ohio housing tax credits. A conceptual rendering has yet to be publicly released (Pivotal). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Commercial uses not part of new vision for Hub 27
A revised plan is moving forward to fill in more of the development gap along West 25th Street between Cleveland’s booming Ohio City neighborhood to the north and the growing La Villa Hispana community to the south. In between is where the latest development, Hub 27, is poised to rise and join other existing, underway and planned developments at the north end of the Clark-Fulton neighborhood.
Real estate developers Pivotal Housing Partners of West Chester, OH, a Cincinnati suburb, and St. Mary Development Corp. of Dayton plan to build two five-story, 53-unit apartment buildings for the first phase of its Hub 27 development. The two buildings would be built at 2500 W. 27th St., behind the Horizon Education Center that fronts West 25th. Total investment in the first phase will be about $40 million.
In an e-mail to NEOtrans, Pete Schwiegeraht, Pivotal’s senior vice president of development for the Midwest Region, confirmed his company is part of a group of companies seeking the Hub 27 development. No longer part of the development is Geis Companies due to a change in proposed programming for the site. Previously, market-rate apartments over commercial uses, including a grocery store, were sought.
Schwiegeraht said Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) are being pursued so both buildings in the first phase could offer apartments that are affordable to lower-income people. Residential may also be the only use in future phases as well. “There is no commercial included in these phases,” he said.
The developers are seeking non-competitive 4 percent tax credits from the Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA) which they are almost certain to win as along as OHFA says the project checks all of its boxes. The 4 percent LIHTC typically subsidizes about 30 percent of the development costs of a low-income housing project.
Phase one and future phases of the Hub 27 development site is located one block west of West 25th Street, behind the Horizon Education Center, and just south of the railroad tracks (MyPlace.CuyahogaCounty.gov).
Schwiegeraht also noted that plans are still in the early stage so no renderings or site plans are publicly available as of yet. This would be the first Cleveland development for Pivotal and for St. Mary. Pivotal has built and/or manages multifamily properties from Pennsylvania to Iowa and south to Texas and Georgia. St. Mary’s properties are limited to the Dayton area, according to its Web site.
One building, Hub 27 Senior Lofts, would offer affordable housing for seniors 55 years and older and be developed by St. Mary. The 55,050-square-foot structure would offer about 6,570 square feet of common areas and 2,040 square feet of space for programming and supportive spaces like wellness programs and activities.
Apartments would have rents that are affordable to people earning 50-70 percent of the area’s median income (AMI). According to the US Census, Cleveland’s AMI per household is $39,041. So these apartments would be affordable to households earning about $19,521 to $27,329 per year.
Planned for the $19.76 million senior housing development are 29 one-bedroom units and 24 two-bedroom apartments. The building would have a 57-space parking lot. Once built, the property will be managed by Pivotal Management LLC, an affiliate of Pivotal Housing Partners, according to an application for LIHTC submitted recently to OHFA.
“The building will adhere to Energy Star and Enterprise Green Communities standards,” St. Mary’s said in its application. “There is a community room with a kitchenette and computer area, as well as a fitness room located within the building. The site is conveniently located close to several essential community amenities — within a mile of a convenience store, Save A Lot grocery store, senior center (Golden Age Center), a public library and various recreation sites.”
Soil clean up at the former Forest City Foundry site west of West 27th Street got underway in June 2022, shortly after the 5-plus-acre site was purchased by investors seeking to redevelop the property (KJP).
The other 53-unit building is proposed as a $20.86 million workforce housing project with Metro West Community Development Corp. engaged as a co-developer. At this early stage, the 60,045-square-foot building is planned to have about 7,708 square feet of common areas along with 3,091 square feet of program and support space like fitness, job training or other offerings.
In its application to OHFA, Pivotal and Metro West noted that their target market for potential residents include teachers, firefighters, police officers, young professionals, seniors on fixed incomes, and many others who work in downtown Cleveland and the near-West Side.
As with the senior housing, rents for the workforce units will be affordable to 50-70 percent of AMI, according to its LIHTC application to OHFA. Pivotal and Metro West plan 24 one-bedroom units, 24 two-bedroom apartments and five three-bedroom suites. A 61-space parking lot is proposed. Pivotal will also manage the property after construction is completed.
The developers have already identified who will design and build both structures in the first phase. Retained is BDCL Architects which, like Pivotal, is based in West Chester. The general contractor will be Ruscilli Construction Co. LLC of Dublin, OH, a Columbus suburb.
The first phase would rise on 2.35 acres owned by Opportune Development LLC, just south of the Norfolk Southern Corp. railroad tracks. Opportune Development, an affiliate of ARPI LLC which is a Cleveland real estate investment firm, acquired this lot and several other adjacent parcels in 2022 to amass approximately 5.38 acres extending west to the intersection of West 30th Street and Train Avenue and south to Queen Avenue.
This is the previous site plan for Hub 27 which had two residential buildings with 156 apartments, or 50 more than what is proposed now. Commercial uses were proposed then, but aren’t now. And, five-story apartment buildings are currently planned whereas only four-story residential structures were considered then (GLSD).
That overall site is exclusive of any neighboring city land bank lots or vacant street rights of way that could also be acquired to expand the potential development footprint further. This plot of land was the former location of ironmaker Forest City Foundry which stood here for more than a century, starting in 1888 as the Walworth Run Foundry Co..
In 2022, Opportune Development remediated the land of any pollutants immediately after acquiring it. The site earned a No Further Action decision from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, making the site shovel-ready for new construction.
This stretch of West 25th was something of a development no-man’s land until recently. Many still don’t know what to call this area. The west side of of West 25th is in Clark-Fulton and the east side is in the Lincoln Heights section of Tremont, both designated city planning areas.
First to reactivate land on the west side of West 25th was Horizon Education Centers which built a new day care center in 2016 at 2500 W. 25th. It was followed by Front Steps’ transitional housing relocating in 2021 from farther north in Ohio City to the newly built, 68-unit apartment building St. Joseph Commons, 2554 W. 25th. Until then, the west side of West 25th had not seen any new development in many years.
Between the growth areas of Ohio City and La Villa Hispana, West 25th Street was a developers’ no-man’s land. That started to change in the 2010s and especially now into the 2020s. Recent developments include, at left, St. Joseph Commons and, in the background, Treo apartments which were still under construction in 2022 (KJP).
More may be coming. Earlier this year, prolific developer Knez Homes bought 1.3 acres at 2426 W. 25th from Jason Lin’s HCI Inc. for a bargain price — $18,810, county records show. Knez Homes President and CEO Bo Knez told NEOtrans he has “no plans at this time” for that site.
Across West 25th, investors and developers have been even more active. In 2011, Nestle USA spent $20 million to renovate and expand the 60-year-old L.J. Minor Corp. plant. The factory manufactures 140 different culinary products and employs several hundred people.
Then Treo opened last year at 2461 W. 25, adding 171 market-rate apartments and a ground-floor tenant fitness center operated by 4QTRS Fitness. The $45 million project was a partnership of Chicago-based Mavrek Development, Cleveland-based general contractor Krueger Group and financier Schiff Capital Group Ltd. of Columbus.
Meanwhile, Property Advisors Group (PAG) of Beachwood and Geis are building the 107-unit, market-rate Lincoln Heights Apartments, due to open in 2025 at 1851 Brevier Ave. PAG acquired from Knez earlier this year its share of the development to build 21 for-same townhomes when the for-sale market improves. Another development that may soon see new life again is the West 20th Apartments, first proposed two years ago.
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